your daily recap

[rone]

Portugal 0 - England 0 (3-1 PKs): This game started out well, then became quite dull.  Rooney was sent off after he stomped Carvalho's soft bits, but you wouldn't know it for a while because England played hard after that, looking for a goal and coming close a few times.  Meanwhile, Portugal never visibly took advantage of their numerical superiority, with a Figo who looked tired and slow.  Both he and Beckham were substituted in the second half, the latter of whom was limping on his way out.  When it came to the penalty kicks, Lampard, who's the player with the most shots taken in the Cup but hasn't scored, still couldn't find the back of the net.  Carragher, who was inserted with less than five minutes left in overtime, ostensibly to knock in a penalty kick, shot before the referee had whistled, and his retake was saved by the Portuguese keeper, who guessed right each time.  At least now the long, national English nightmare is over, and Sven-Goran Eriksson is gone.  And we got to see Victoria Beckham cry, too.

France 1 - Brazil 0: You know, for all the talk about how Brazil could field two World Cup teams with their talent, they could've used that second team today, because their top team played as poorly as any team i've seen in the Cup.  The French were absolutely solid until near the end, when Brazil desperately tried to tie as Parreira inserted every one of his forwards.  Zidane played like it was 1998 again, and he connected with Henry for the goal (this is Zidane's first assist ever to an Henry goal in international play).  Needless to say, i'm thrilled that Brazil is out, and maybe they need to stop fooling around with the ball for Nike commercials and learn to play with each other again.  France-Portugal happens on Wednesday.

Comments

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

It's essentially historical: the first "international" match was between Scotland and England, and it kinda stemmed from there. It's reinforced by the separate league structures, too. The Olympics, OTOH were revived by a French bloke (IIRC), so it didn't start with a Scotland-England rivalry. The UK hasn't been represented in the Olympic soccer tournament for a number of years, partly because the various associations refuse to field a united team (that's currently a bone of contention with regard to 2012) which might be strong enough to qualify. There is a movement in some parts of FIFA to force the UK associations to unite, but there's a lot of stubbornness in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A few years back ('92 or '96, I forget which) Scotland very nearly qualified to represent the UK at the Olympics (European qualification at that time required teams to finish in the top 3 of the UEFA U21 championships; Scotland finished 4th). If they had qualified, it would have been a Scottish team representing Britain at the Olympics, with no players from the other associations...

It isn't the only sport where this arises. For example, Scotland and the other home nations compete separately in the World and European curling championships, but Scottish teams have represented the UK at the Olympics for at least the last 20 years. I think there's a similar set-up with regard to boxing, but there are more grey areas, there. Oh, and one of my friends keeps reminding me that Scotland held (may still hold, for all I know) the slightly improbable title of world elephant polo champions.